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pgcrockhead
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Name: Philip
Country: United States
State: Oklahoma
Metro: Stillwater
Birthday: 9/4/1985
Interests: God, snowboarding, paintball, rock climbing, camping in the snow and getting frostBITE, and other outdoorsy stuff that I can only do about once a year. I'm a Computer Science major, so I'm supposed to like computers too.
Occupation: Student
Industry: Nonprofit
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  pgcrockhead
Member Since:
6/4/2004
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| A Sobering ThoughtI had to steal this from my good buddy Ben:
"I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down. At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesses look like broken toys . . . And perhaps, by God's grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right sources. But the moment the threat is withdrawn, my whole nature leaps back to the toys . . . Thus the terrible necessity of tribulation is only too clear. God has had me for but forty-eight hours and then only by dint of taking everything else away from me. Let Him but sheathe that sword for a moment and I behave like a puppy when the hated bath is over--I shake myself as dry as I can and race off to reacquire my comfortable dirtiness, if not in the nearest manure heap, at least in the nearest flower bed. And that is why tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless."
-C.S. Lewis
"Those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives" (Hebrews 12:6). Any man who finds himself without tribulation of some sort in some period of his life is a man to be pitied. Thank God life isn't a bed of roses.
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| Making Disciples Assembly-Line StyleIt's funny how well we can learn things in theory while totally disregarding them in real life.
In 2001, I went to a conference at my church called Disciple Now, and the theme for the conference was "Back to the Basics." It was one of those small-group things where you stay in a host family's house and have a couple college-aged guys teach you everything you need to know. For this particular D-Now, we were learning things such as how to spend time with God, pray, memorize scripture, share Christ with others through our lifestyle, and how live as a "disciple" of Christ for a lifetime. Overall, it was pretty awesome material that I think should be emphasized more in the Church.
But that's a lot to learn in two days. I guess that's why they call it Disciple Now. Because in theory, if by some miracle you were able to learn these things and put them into action, you would become a disciple of Christ instantaneously.
But that's not how it works. I didn't have a single quiet time after that, I didn't memorize a single verse, and I didn't talk to a single lost friend about Christ. That was 6 years ago, and it's taken me the last 3 years of college to relearn the same things they were trying to teach in two days, and I STILL don't have them down very well at all. I am a pretty horrible disciple of Christ now after 3 years of really working at it; how did they expect me to keep up with things after just 2 days?
You can't teach on a assembly line. Telling isn't teaching, and listening isn't learning. You learn to do by doing, and that takes LOTS of time and effort on both the teacher's and the learner's part. You can't just pump information into a student and send him home and expect it to do any good! You have to come alongside him, help him, meet his needs, live life with him, and invest lots of personal time and energy into him if you want him to really learn these things. And most importantly, you have to practice what you're teaching together!
Look back into all those training programs and church camps that you've been to, and you'll agree: there are no shortcuts. You have to sacrifice yourself for a person to teach him anything properly.
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| Helpful TipRecord lectures. Seriously. Rather than looking over notes and reading the textbook to write papers, you can just listen to old lectures and retype everything the professor says in your own words.
I have found that this works especially well for philosophy classes. But of course with the way things go, I don't write papers in the classes that are important. As I said a long time ago, why can't I get the good grades in the classes that matter?
Another helpful tip:
"The desire of the sluggard puts him to death, for his hands refuse to work; all day long he is craving while the righteous gives without holding back." - Proverbs 21:25-26
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| Keep Worrying About Your Future. It Will Get You Nowhere.Why is everyone so worried about what they want to do after college? Doesn't anybody have any life goals based on things other than career and marriage?
Honestly, if your life goal is to get a good career, you have everything to worry about. Because your career is going to change, and there is always potential for it to fail. Besides, when you're on your death bed you won't be thinking about how awesome your career was/might have been. So really, it doesn't make sense to worry too much about it. There is more to life than money, posessions, wife, and family. There is more to life than trying to have a good time. We don't have enough time on earth to be preoccupied with making things easy or pleasant for ourselves.
What will you be thinking about in the end? People. God. How well you lived, what kind of difference you made in the scheme of eternity. Hopefully we will all be thinking something like this:
"For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now
there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord,
the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me,
but also to all who have longed for his appearing" (2 Timothy 4:6-8).
Somehow I don't think Paul was concerned with taking it easy in life when he wrote this, and if he had been in our shoes, I think he would be thinking things like, "What am I doing now that will invest in eternity?" - a question we all should ask.
The point is this: stop obsessing about temporary things like career and marriage. Life wasn't made to be easy, and if God thinks it's best for you to be single forever and slave at McDonald's until you die, so be it. You've got something better to live for: your Lord and His work. Why should McDonalds put a damper on things? It's just another mission field that's ripe for harvest.
At least with God and ministry at the center of our lives we can say we fought the good fight, and when we die we have something better to look forward to. If I had to choose between Paul's mentality and a comfortable life with a good career/marriage, I would choose the former.
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